The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel

Description

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, WASHINGTON
POST, AND TIME MAGAZINE “A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel
. . . Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing.” —Danez Smith, The
New York Times Book Review “We all need—we all deserve—this vibrant, love-
affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us.”
—Ron Charles, The Washington Post From James McBride, author of the
bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book
Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the
people who keep them In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were
digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to
find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it
got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken
Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans
lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where
Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona
ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf
boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor
at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken
Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters’ stories
overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the
margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive.
When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the
part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even
in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.
Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as
compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird. Read
more

Features:

Product Details:

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Riverhead Books (August 8, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593422945
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 46
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.28 x 1.29 x 9.27 inches
• Best Sellers Rank: #7 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #1 in Black & African American Literature (Books) #1 in Literary Fiction (Books) #1 in Jewish Historical Fiction
• #1 in Black & African American Literature (Books)
• #1 in Literary Fiction (Books)